As he had disposed with boyish, almost irresponsible rashness,
and in flagrant contravention of all canon law, so it fell out.
Don Zuleyman, wearing the bishop's robes and the bishop's mitre,
intoned the Kyrie Eleison before noon that day in the Cathedral
of Coimbra, and pronounced the absolution of the Infante of
Portugal, who knelt so submissively and devoutly before him.

Affonso Henriques was very pleased with himself. He made a jest
of the affair, and invited his intimates to laugh with him. But
Emigio Moniz and the elder members of his council refused to
laugh. They looked with awe upon a deed that went perilously near
to sacrilege, and implored him to take their own sober view of
the thing he had done.

"By the bones of St. James!" he cried. "A prince is not to be
brow-beaten by a priest."

Such a view in the twelfth century was little short of
revolutionary. The chapter of the Cathedral of Coimbra held the
converse opinion that priests were not to be browbeaten by a
prince, and set themselves to make Affonso Henriques realize this
to his bitter cost. They dispatched to Rome an account of his
unconscionable, high-handed, incredible sacrilege, and invited
Rome to administer condign spiritual flagellation upon this
errant child of Mother Church. Rome made haste to vindicate her
authority, and dispatched a legate to the recalcitrant, audacious
boy who ruled in Portugal. But the distance being considerable,
and means of travel inadequate and slow, it was not until Don
Zuleyman had presided in the See of Coimbra for a full two months
that the Papal Legate made his appearance in Affonso Henriques'